1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a self-help oil changing apparatus and, more particularly, to a self-help oil changing apparatus operable by a user to change oil for vehicle.
2. Description of the Related Art
Engine oil change per 1000 km is the basic and most common maintenance of motorcycles. Most consumers send their motorcycles to maintenance works and ask a worker to help them change the engine oil. An engine oil change process generally includes: (1) removing a bolt from an oil drain hole to drain the dirty engine oil; (2) leaning the motorcycle leftward to drain the remaining dirty engine oil when the flow of the dirty engine oil becomes smaller; (3) putting the bolt back into the oil drain hole and tightening the bolt; (4) removing a plug from an oil filling port by pliers, and inserting a funnel into the oil filling port; (5) slowing pouring clean engine oil into the funnel; and (6) after filling of the clean engine oil is finished, remove the funnel and put the plug back into the oil filling port, accomplishing the engine oil change.
However, the troublesome engine oil change process takes about 10-20 minutes, which is inefficient. Furthermore, the skin of the hand of the worker is often stained with the engine oil, which is detrimental to the health after years of working. Further, the engine oil process is generally conducted in and, thus, restricted by the working hours of the maintenance works, which is not always convenient to the consumers. Further, each engine oil bottle includes a bottle body, a sealing film and at least one label. These packaging materials also incur costs to the consumers in addition to the engine oil and the labor cost of the worker. The total costs per engine oil change are about NT$150-250 in Taiwan. Although the expense may not be a burden to the consumers, the consumers often ignores the importance of regular maintenance of the vehicles and are unwilling to regularly change the engine oil under the pressure of increasing expenses of consumable energy including gasoline. Namely, the consumers would rather drive extra hundreds of kilometers to reduce the average maintenance costs. As a result, the vehicle engines are liable to damage and, thus, have a shortened service life. Further, 15 million motorcycles consume about 200 million bottles of engine oil. The packaging materials of these engine oil bottles result in a huge amount of garbage and cause a big problem to environmental protection.